“Keep your shirt on, young fellow,” Hunt responded, puffing imperturbably.  “I say I believe you won’t win out—­but that’s not saying I don’t want you to win out.  If that’s what you want to do, go to it, and may luck be with you, and may the devil stay in hell.  The morals of other people are out of my line—­none of my business.  I’m a painter, and it’s my business to paint people as I find them.  But Maggie certainly did put her finger on the tough spot in your proposition:  for a crook to find a job and win the confidence of people.  It’s up grade all the way, and it takes ten men’s nerve to stick it out to the top.  Yep, Maggie was sure right!”

And then the Duchess broke her accustomed silence with her thin croak: 

“Never you mind Maggie!  She thinks she knows everything, but she doesn’t know anything.”

Larry looked in surprise at his grandmother.  There was a flash in her old eyes; but the next moment the spark was gone.

“Sure you’re up against it—­but I’ll be rooting for you.”  Hunt was grinning.  “But say, young fellow, what made you decide to vote the other ticket?”

Larry was trained at reading faces; and in the rough-hewn, grinning features of Hunt he read good-fellowship.  Larry swiftly responded in kind, for from the moment he had pulled the mask of being a fool from the painter and shown him to be a real artist, he had felt drawn toward this impecunious swashbuckler of the arts.  So he now repeated the business motives which he had presented to Barney and Old Jimmie.  As Larry talked he became more spontaneous, and after a time he was telling of the effect upon him of seeing various shrewd men locked up and unexercised in prison.  And presently his reminiscence settled upon one prison acquaintance:  a man past middle age, clever in his generation, who had already done some fifteen years of a long sentence.  He was, said Larry, grim and he rarely spoke; but a close, wordless friendship had developed between them.  Only once, in an unusually relaxed mood, had the old convict spoken of himself, but what he had then said had had a greater part in rousing Larry to his new decision than the words of any other man.

“It was a queer story Joe let out,” continued Larry.  “Before he was sent away he had a kid, just a baby whose mother was dead.  He told me he wanted to have his kid brought up without ever knowing anything about the kind of people he knew and the kind of life he’d lived.  He wanted it to grow up among decent people.  He had money put away and he had an old friend, a pal, that he’d trust with anything.  So he turned over his money and his baby to his friend, and gave orders that the kid was to be brought up decent, sent to school, and that the kid was never to know anything about Joe.  Of course the baby was too young then ever to remember him; and when he gets out he’s going to keep absolutely clear of the kid’s life—­he wants his kid to have the best possible chance.”